The most random post of the day - Introducing the smart solar wifi-enabled welsh dragon LED home assistant-powered anti-Ronski detector....

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20 Jul 2007
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A sunnier or damper area than Ron-ski....
....gotta work on that title.... :D

Backstory
My solar panels and battery have changed the way my house runs, however I’m tired of endless arrays of apps and having to stare at a phone to understand what’s happening. You never leave someone’s home enthusing about how beautiful their phone, their TV or their fridge was – technology remains at best minimalist, at worst it is soulless.

Meanwhile, we have all these lovely ornaments and crafted objects that gather dust or just sit dumbly in cabinets doing very little but gather dust. After a while, you stop noticing them at all.
Surely, there's a way to combine the best of both??? (dramatic arc begins!)

Problem 1: I had a glass dragon ornament that was stuck in a box as it was too fragile to trust that I'd bought from Conwy castle last year - a beautiful object, but very fragile and also only really at its best when light shining through it.
Problem 2: I started the Overclockers solar tracking league table on PVOutput and so became overly attached to tracking how well (or badly) I was doing each day compared to nefarious delinquents like @Ron-ski @Freefaller @Welshman or the many other folks! So I didn't want to constantly be opening apps to see this.
Problem 3: Solar is generally addictive - so you find yourself checking the app to check your battery level, check your household usage, checking if you're exporting, check if you need to put the washing machine on.... I know I sound like a loon, but those of you who have solar will back me up.

My mad solution
I made a walnut base:
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Then I soldered the hell out of a whole bunch of stuff:
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Then I embedded LEDs into the walnut base (I also put a 3d printed frosted light deflector over them to diffuse the light)
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These LEDs were then connected to a microchip with an LED controller – and created a 3d printed case for this. Then I connected this chip via wifi to my home assistant instance and away we go!

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How it works
To visitors to my house, this is simply a cool base for my glass ornament, but every pixel is programmed to convey information.

In this shot, you can see the outer ring is showing the battery is 100% full.

The next ring in shows the household usage - which is currently around 2.3kw (a full ring is 4kw+ down to an empty ring which means nothing is being used).
The animated effect in the centre shows lots of energy generation – this gets more and more animated with increased solar generation - as this shot was at night, it was naturally no inner effects.
Below, you can see the animation is going as it's mid morning.
View attachment Xe7ZW5c.jpg

Finally, when I’m top of the PV Output table – it turns the whole thing rainbow coloured…. here's a photo of me testing this as it unfortunately hasn't happened recently since lots of new members joined and Ron-ski upgraded his solar panels...! ;)
View attachment rXkHNK2.jpg

The whole thing updates every 5 seconds and turns off automatically at night.

It’s mad, I know, but it shows technology doesn’t need to be trapped within a glass front and a monochromatic plastic/aluminium case. And that’s another 20 fewer glances at a phone each day….!

Basically was only the cost of the LEDs and the ESP8266 as had the rest lying around - so just needed:
- A glass cloche online to protect the dragon from accidental bumps
- A WS2802 LED Ring Array for the base lighting
- An offcut piece of 270mm x 270mm walnut for the base
- An ESP8266
- An LED transformer – I used a 15A 5V one for this project. Probably overkill, but I like to over-engineer such things… ;)
- One mad wumman!

Posted some more pics on my instagram feed for anyone interested: https://www.instagram.com/handsonk80/

Now need to go, there's some men in white coats that have arrived to take me away.....
 
Do your children help at all? Mine would be a hindrance :D

Love it! :cool:

They're more a hindrance as they come up with even more mad ideas - eg I'm currently sewing a dress as my daughter wants to be Princess Peach as she just saw the Super Mario movie. So 3d printed brooch done, now moving onto the dress itself!
 
Brilliant, love it - what's it doing at the moment, as I'm at the top of the charts :D Is it breathing fire?

Did you make it into the 40's club yesterday, you were very close on PV Output?
I've switched it off as the sounds of boos coming from the speaker were too annoying.... :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

I did! It was 42.3 yesterday! (still need to get time to have a fiddle with PV Output as it's slightly out of sync it appears)
 
Inspiration is useful though! Kids have amazing imagination <3

My youngest is obsessed with Mario at the moment.
Yes indeed - they're great fun - both thoroughly Mario obsessed - 4 year old has completed every Mario game out there....! (should get him the SNES version, back when they were properly hard.... :D )
 
Looks awesome, and always love seeing an esphome project!

What's the quality of the LEDs like? + Range of colours.

I always find it a bit of a minefield finding LEDs as good as the hue ones, cheap ones never get the colour qualities.
LEDs are excellent actually - really good quality colours. Obviously not going to be used for lighting a room or something, so doubt they're as good a hue lights, but serves the purpose!
 
impressive, thats a great project ad fantastic result :) I was just looking at an e-ink display to duck tape to the smart meter but feel like i've got to up my game (and progress photos) a bit!
Ooh, I'm going to have a play with those also in due course, have a few use cases for that! The low battery usage makes it really handy in lots of places!
 
This looks great and I love the original idea behind it. You could sell these you know....
Well I'll need to think about some of these things, I really like the idea of combining technology and traditional art/furniture.

You just need to simplify technology down to its bare bones really, I could call my shop Underclockers UK or something.... :D:D:D
 
Very cool and I can definitely back up on quite how much time is spent checking solar, energy use annd anll the rest. I also tweak heating settings to improve efficiency. I have GivEnergy batteries going in over the next couple of weeks so will finally have to get my data into Home Assistant and join the league. I won’t be competing with anyone approaching the 40 club though! I’m lucky to hit 25kWh on a mid-summers day.
You won't yet Coran, you won't yet........ it's addictive! :cry::cry::cry:
 
I didn't realise you were Welsh, da iawn

That's definitely more interesting and more informative than my smart metre. I don't know how you find the time do do something like that with kids, i can barely organise making a cup of tea nowadays.
Bore da! I know what you mean, but they're as bad as me - was up sewing a Princess Peach costume yesterday as my daughter just saw the movie, so 3d printing a brooch whilst sewing the dress..... It's either that or spend the evening watching Love Island like most women seem too! (Oh and playing on my steam deck is another guilty secret!)
 
You should see the sauna she's built... I know her husband probably helps other than taking arty shots of his wife, but still bloody impressive!
Team work makes the.... sauna work and all that!

Actually I should post some photos of my two little helpers - they were doing a surprising amount of the building and gardening too!
 
I wish I had the patience for things like this.
I have a 3d printer and barely used it. Just can't seem to find enough of a draw to spend time learning and then making stuff.


Looks amazing! And could add anything for the internal decor!
OMG! I use my two 3D printers almost constantly (even more now it's free electricity with solar!!)

All my cooking stuff has bespoke organisers, sewing stuff, every drawer, workshop, kids toys, gadgets, it's endless!!!

I knew 3d graphics before I had one, so learning curve was very minimal, but goodness it's life-changing!!

Thank you for the kind comments though, I was quite pleased with it!!
 
Yeah that's my problem. I dunno if I have adhd but I really struggle now to invest time in non physical stuff.

I'll gladly drive an hour to. Go mountain biking for the day. But can I sit down and "learn" for 3 hours? Just can't seem to get myself to do it.

Same as losing interest in computer games. Just never can get into the mindset of committing the time.

Soon learnt that if you can 3d design... 3d printer isn't too exciting
Ah interesting! Yes, certainly 3d design is pretty key!!
 
So not quite as fancy, Welsh or shiny but got my ePaper display with Raspberry Pi Pico W yesterday so a few glasses of whisky later:

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Pulling data together on a Pi Zero W from the different elements of my setup, making it available as a json file and displaying it, in a rather ugly way, to the badger
Lovely work! I'm itching to use an eink display for something, I just want to find the perfect idea!! This looks great!
 
So cool!

This thread has also reminded me of the cable clips you so kindly sent me, I moved house rather suddenly last year so my desk set up changed so i've yet to set them up but I will try some of them soon on my new set up and let you know how I go :D
Ooh good point, I need to do some cabling, so they'll be getting printed again for them!
 
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